How Christianity Saved Civilization…and Must Do So Again - Mike Aquilina, James L. Papandrea
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Early Church Fathers
History Of Christianity
Orthodoxy
Shared by:professoramoretti@gmail.com
Written by ,
Read by Peggy Normandin
Format: M4B
Unabridged
Ancient Rome’s brutal culture exploited the weak and considered human life expendable. Women were used as property; unwanted children were left on the streets to die.
Four centuries later, even ordinary men and women prospered in what had become a vigorous new Christian society, a society that served the vulnerable, exalted women, treasured virtue, and loved peace.
Faith had triumphed. Truth was proclaimed. And on this rock-solid foundation, Christian society flourished in the West for the next 1500 years.
These eye-opening sections document the many ways in which Christians penetrated and civilized that debased Roman empire, introducing then-radical notions such as the equal dignity of women, respect for life, protection of the weak and vulnerable, and the obligation of rulers to serve those they rule and maximize their freedom.
Here you’ll learn about the seven specific areas where any paganism, ancient or modern, is particularly vulnerable. They provide a roadmap for modern Christians to reclaim for the faith our own neo-pagan modern culture.
Facing an overwhelmingly dark and hostile culture, Rome’s early Christians took the steps necessary to transform it. Their struggles and the hard lessons they learned documented here afford us hope that, by imitating their example, we may do the same for our culture today.
How Christianity Saved Civilization was previously published as Seven Revolutions: How Christianity Changed the World and Can Change It Again. This new edition has been brought into print to offer hope that Christianity may once again transform our dark and hostile culture.
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This post has 26 comments with rating of 3.9/5
August 20th, 2019
Duck! :)
August 20th, 2019
Wow! Fantastic! Many thanks!!
August 20th, 2019
Um … NO.
August 20th, 2019
Saved… Damn, where is a cry laughing emoji when you need one.
August 20th, 2019
Reporter: What do you think of Western civilisation?
Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
August 20th, 2019
The classic Gandhi quote was prefigured by the great G.K. Chesterton - “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”
Arguably, there was no civilisation (as we understand the term) prior to the Christian conception of the dignified individual & community, and the intrinsic value of human life. The idea existed in a nascent, embryonic form, in the minds of some philosophers. Its very inchoate nature is exemplified by the finest thinkers who lived before the advent of Christianity; Plato (if a person is unable to support themselves, they should just be let die); and Aristotle (some people are slaves by their very nature).
If anyone is aware of, or has ever encountered, a philosophy of life or system of objective ethics which places a higher value on human life - I’m all sceptical ears.
Of course, as we know, that pre-Christian view of the human person as being without essential value & eminently disposable is returning with a vengeance.
August 21st, 2019
How many people have died in the name of religion??
Too many to count!!
Put your religion where the sun don’t shine!!
With all due respect:)
August 21st, 2019
Wow. A lot of crying bitches here. Thank you for the download. It amazes me how many people love the benefits of Western Christianity, but complain about Western Christianity. Read some history — not the crap your liberal profs threw at you,… actual history
August 21st, 2019
@flrecat777: you shouldn’t be so “amazed” that people are offended by religious people claiming they need to “save” others (not just others, the entire civilization, according to this author). It’s incredibly ignorant, not to mention narcissistic.
August 21st, 2019
@flarecat777: you shouldn’t be so “amazed” that people are offended by religious people claiming they need to “save” others (not just others, the entire civilization, according to this author). It’s incredibly ignorant, not to mention narcissistic.
August 22nd, 2019
Is this about the Church’s Bonfires of the Jews, or The Vatican’s Silence during the Third Reich? Oh, maybe it’s about the burning of the the monk who said the earth was not the center of the cosmos. So much burning, it’s impossible to keep it all straight. But not gay, the gays were burned, too. And then there is 2000 years of buggered boys.
May I please not be saved?
August 22nd, 2019
“Arguably, there was no civilisation (as we understand the term) prior to the Christian conception of the dignified individual & community, and the intrinsic value of human life.”
The many civilizations which predate Christianity and the many concepts and precepts of those civilizations which were incorporated into Christianity would make that a pretty easy “argument” to dispel.
“how many people love the benefits of Western Christianity…”
I’m guessing you’ve got an overbroad idea of what falls under the heading ‘benefits of western christianity”. I don’t think Jesus invented the internet, but maybe you disagree.
August 22nd, 2019
Great response - didn’t mean to bugya!
Our conception of what constitutes morally acceptable, civilised behaviour was wholly altered - a revoltion in the head, the only genuine revolution to have ever taken place, because it re-evaluated & reconceptualised power - the actual focus of revolution.
“Civilisations” pre-existed ours, but not “as we understand the term” - these dubious projects comprised, inter alia: human sacrifice (including the ritual sacrifice of children); infanticide, whereby children were exposed to predatory animals attracted by their cries and scent, & the elements, of course; cruelty & savagery, including intentional killing, as a spectacle of mass entertainment.
No doubt you could generate a substantial list of your own - my own isn’t exhaustive, by any means. Of course, to desire to live under the grinding heel of this brutal barbarism you’d have to first have “an overbroad idea of what falls under the heading” of civilisation (as we understand the term) & actual civilised conduct.
A morally evaluative, historically informed judgment is necessary in order to adequately assess the true worth of the “civilisations” which preceded Christianity. But, here’s the thing, that very ethical lens, the means by which we weigh good & evil, in addition to the concept of human rights, is provided by Judeo-Christianity.
To address what you said in the latter half - the full weight & import of this overwhelming contribution - morally, philosophically, politically, ethically, educationally, scientifically, legally, artistically, musically, architecturally, linguistically, in economics & literature, and in humanitarian terms - is not comprehended, appreciated or admitted. The obvious question is: Why?
August 22nd, 2019
Why do you define pre-christian societies by their worst facets and christian ones by their best?
You write off everything prior to Christianity because child sacrifice was practiced by an exceedingly small percentage of these cultures, yet the epidemic of sexual abuse perpetrated by the world’s most powerful christian church isn’t enough to condemn ‘judeo-christianity’.
The idea that morality and ethics arise from judeo-christianity is ahistorical and laughable.
It’s just as false as claiming that English is directly descended from Japanese because of loan words like ‘typhoon’, ‘emoji’ and ’sake’.
That you have the balls to claim science owes a debt to ‘judeo-christianity’, when scientific progress has been stymied by christian churches from it’s inception as a formal practice to this very day, just shows how disingenuous you are prepared to be to lead people to the conclusion you arrived at before the argument began.
August 23rd, 2019
“Why do you define pre-christian societies…”
- Because we’re talking about the essence of civilisation, at its highest moral & ethical expression. The condition of that morality before & after the advent of Christianity is entirely germane, because that’s how we define civilisation & civilised conduct, so we have to assess the relative merits. The conception of human personhood altered in absolute terms from the Classical period - which is the most elevated example of culture prior to the Christian era.
Of course, someone making the opposite argument to me will provide every terrible detail - but nothing of the good. That’s our old adversarial system operating. It’s in the nature of contention that we don’t make our opponents’ arguments for them. For example, that’s why you assert that the Church absolutely blocked scientific progress. Can that be true, when it established the university system almost a 1000 years ago? Such a multi-disciplinary network of institutions had never existed before. Virtually all of the relevant advances you can name have taken place within that institution. Each branch of science broke away from philosophy in these universities over the centuries as the disciplines became more specialised.
The “Culture Wars” over in America are distorting people’s understanding of these historical achievements. I don’t wish to appear rude, but I’m not interested in these wars. As with all wars, each side is propagandised in totally different, extreme directions. None of this results in genuine knowledge. What it does result in is pure, unadulterated boredom for people who have to explain history, philosophy & everything in between to the victims of the various propaganda efforts. It’s phucking interminable. Every single ignorant comment - a phucking deluge online. Or a torrent, given the purpose of this particular site.
On this subject generally, I comprehend not being fully on board metaphysically in respect of Christianity (although a knowledge of metaphysics helps) but I don’t understand the reasons for all of the weird distortions & intentional dishonesty regarding the factual historical record. Pseudo-history is promoted as fact in order to promote plainly political agendas. And no one learns a damn thing.
Naturally, I don’t claim that morality and ethics arose solely from Judeo-Christianity. That would be another of those straw fellows that you hear about. Our standard of morality, reason & ethics (in Europe, at any rate) is a fusion of Athens & Jerusalem. We need both; so, no, I don’t write off everything prior to our era (more dratted straw). But, Athens without Jerusalem? Let’s just say, you wouldn’t enjoy living in Plato’s Athens (or his Republic), precisely because your ethical perspective has been culturally shaped by Christianity. Its impact need not have been direct, but it has influenced the development of everything in the West.
In the West, we’re living off the fumes of that morality, and, like thankless children, hate to acknowledge its origins.
We shouldn’t allow evil people to be the ethical benchmark. That includes hypocrites who wear a religious mantle.
I couldn’t agree more on the abuse issue. People & their institutions tend towards moral evil. Each & every institution. The State butchered almost 200 million human beings during the 20th Century. The bloodiest in human history.
The vast majority of physical, sexual & emotional abuse has always been perpetrated by the family. All institutions are corrupt. Yet we need these institutions. Awareness is the issue here.
Unfortunately, we can’t claim that the mass spectacle of cruel savagery as entertainment specifically “was practiced by an exceedingly small percentage of these cultures” - if only we could. Ritualised violence has a long, bloody history, as does human sacrifice.
The system of monasteries which developed throughout Europe, not only preserved literacy, but also the products of the Classical era which we so value. This, in spite of repeated attacks. The works they preserved included bawdy, licentious & atheistic works, believe it or not.
As to the subject of this book - if the toxic political ideologies which made the 20th Century run red with blood have taught us nothing else that is useful (and they haven’t) it’s that things can always get far worse. The Whigs were dead wrong about the upward march of history. A hard-won ethical system can always be expunged, and previously civilised cultures can immediately go right over the moral cliff.
I’ve argued on both sides of this debate over the years, so people can always be persuaded.
I enjoyed the rhetorical analogy.
August 23rd, 2019
“I’m arguing for this side, so why would I tell the truth?”
Thanks for being so upfront about it.
August 23rd, 2019
Well, slightly unfair, I’m sure you’ll agree. However, if it does contain a modicum of truth, it encompasses both of us, the adversarial system, and every debate & argument ever joined!
But then if everyone’s guilty…
Of course, if that’s your considered, measured position, it couldn’t be any better.
August 23rd, 2019
Thank you, professor! I’ve read Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization and How Christianity Changed the World by Alvin J. Schmidt, and I’m looking forward to this one.
Obviously there are a lot of different things that bring a society together and foster its growth, and their metanarrative is a critical component.
For all the crying and complaining on the part of religious antagonists, such as the sexual exploitation of children, which was left unchecked in the ancient Greco-Roman world, is it not the Christian ethic which feeds the moral conscience that is responsible for its condemnation? Is it not the traces of that very pre-Christian hedonism that is being played out today in wake of the sexual revolution which is broadening to include legal protection for pedophilia?
If it were not for the Christian conscience, I dare say that slavery would have continued to canvas the world as it had throughout history and every culture, and the notion of civil rights would have been dead in the water.
August 23rd, 2019
I don’t understand why people give one star because they don’t like the content of the book. I thought it was supposed to reflect the quality. One doesn’t have to like a book. It’s a free country, and everyone can have an opinion. But it’s not helpful to rate whether a book is properly and well uploaded by one’s religious or political opinions.
August 24th, 2019
Why rank a book poorly just because it’s a bad book?
August 24th, 2019
…why not use mindless left/right ideology as your sole, barren criterion for interpreting the world? Why learn anything at all, outside of that political ideology?
Absolutely spot-on, prof, but it’s a superficial thumbs up/thumbs down culture. There are entire “personalities” invested in those thumbs. Another denizen of dumb wielding a significant thumb. Yet somehow, happiness always eludes ‘em!
August 25th, 2019
Who said anything about left/right? I thought we were talking about childish re-imaginings of Christianity’s early history.
That you claim to be be taking such a long view of history while shilling for a book which forces the square peg of roman-era christianity into the round hole of today’s left-right dichotomy says more about you than this book says about anything.
August 25th, 2019
Oh, so you have read the book in the interim? And I notice that your thumb of dumb has made its reappearance (where had that bad boy been hidin’?). And spare us the old - I don’t need to read any actual books - line of sophisticated argument. Just assume that, like your other bogus ploys, it’s been done before. Also, any serious assessment of history generally involves taking a “long view” - you shouldn’t find this gratuitously offensive, it’s kind of an occupational hazard.
Your hysterical attack is pure political ideology (and profoundly silly). It repeats identical, historically uninformed talking points which appear ad nauseam on this site & others, promoting asinine agendas. Moreover, it reflects a single paradigm, one prism through which the impacted subject can view the world.
The model manifests as follows: because you genuinely do not know the history or facts involved, and have proven this in the above exchanges, one impotent argumentational ruse remains open to you. You deploy your expedient paraphrase in response to actual arguments, and hope that the distortion will pass for substance. The dubious advantage of this gambit is that the user need possess no erudition whatsoever, as in the present unfortunate instance.
You guys are a depressing sight, with your ideological circus show. You’re all over the net, trying to impress others with your Culture Wars. Yeah, it’s really cutting edge stuff when you ignorantly misinterpret everything about history, politics, religion, philosophy, science, the history of ideas - really anything you can name & then soil with your brainless contention. Cos witless ignorance is, like, so totes cool ‘n stuff!
Every single time you hear something that contradicts your stoopid ideology, it’s “fake news” time, isn’t it? Join us when that shuttle lands, pardner.
September 2nd, 2019
Out of respect to the prof and his 5 star work, I will refrain from posting 2.5 stars, which I am offering to Mike Aquilina and James L. Papandrea’s fair, but not particularly great work.
Outside of the unnecessary long introduction, there was also the occasional unedited repetition. I mentioned above, having read How Christianity Changed the World by Alvin J. Schmidt, and I would much sooner recommend it, but still lacks critical scholarship. Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization was also important in the way it traces Saint Patrick’s work and the Irish monks who kept the Greco-Roman literature alive.
Sociologist, Rodney Stark is another notable author who has contributed to the legacy left by Christianity, but unfortunately his ground breaking works tends to leave a few stones unturned. I would really like to see a scholarly work published that takes into account related essential research that deserves to be fully and critically examined.
For example, the Egyptians appear to be the only known people in history that banned infanticide, but it wasn’t always prohibited there. The question is, what was their reasons? The Judeo-Christian ethic prohibited infanticide as well, but it was the Christians who would introduce it to the Western world as a principle ethic. Even today, we see the distinct Christian influence on the issue of abortion, over and against secular society.
It is certainly true that Christianity has most definitely influenced social morays, at times cultivating unearthed positive characteristics, sometimes exclusively, and by reintroducing others that have been lost. Only the most bitter god-hating ilk would simply dismiss them without a thought.
What I would like to see, is topics such as slavery, infanticide, pedophilia, capital punishment, religious freedom, free-thought, civil rights, human rights, women’s and children’s rights explored as a possible distinct contribution of Christianity. It doesn’t mean that all of Christendom have always gotten it right, the mere introduction of such social morays makes it worth consideration, especially as there are those who tend to be ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
May 17th, 2024
Anything is preferable to the evilization now imperialistically conquering through progtard bots cranked out by fascist propaganda schools, entertainment, and social media.
May 1st, 2025
I hate democracy a lot.
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